3 Down, 7 to Go

So much of the FX dramatization of the 1995 Simpson murder trial has been private conversations that my take on the miniseries so far is pretty much as a spectator.

Perhaps having spent most of my waking hours in the downtown area of Los Angeles as the main city and county administrative centers, a couple of scenes caught my eye.

One was the balcony Marcia Clark stood to feed her nicotine habit. My assumption is it was a balcony of the Criminal Courts building because City Hall could be seen across the street and the District Attorney’s office complex is in CCB (since renamed the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center). What jarred me was that the balcony Marcia Clark was on looked like it was about two and no more than three stories from the ground. The DA’s office complex is on the 18th floor. I can’t think of anything on the second or third floor that would have accounted for Marcia Clark being there.

On the plus side, Sarah Paulson became a more believable Marcia Clark in this episode. Not being part of the attorneys’ conversations, which made up the bulk of this episode, I focused more on the actors’ portrayals.

The more I see John Travolta in this show, the less I see Robert Shapiro. Travolta doesn’t look like Shapiro, is much larger than Shapiro, doesn’t sound like Shapiro and just isn’t the same presence as Shapiro. Or more accurately, Shapiro wasn’t the same presence that Travolta is. Travolta comes across to me as a larger-than-life character. Shapiro wasn’t.

Bruce Greenwood, except for being a bit smaller, is a dead ringer for Los Angeles Superior Court Criminal Division Supervising Judge James Bascue, not the Gil Garcetti character he was playing.

I’m still trying to figure out why David Schwimmer was cast as Robert Kardashian. Nothing about Schwimmer looks, sounds like or reminds me in any way of Kardashian. The character Schwimmer is playing looks like a lost geek who has no idea what’s going on.

And what was that ChinChin restaurant scene all about? Just as all of the promos featuring Kardashian’s ex, Kris Jenner, seemed like the maximum exploitation of what has become The Kardashians, scenes of Kardashian’s children seemed like nothing more than yet another way to capitalize on that brand.

Thinking about it later, though, perhaps it was a vehicle to showcase what the series makers’ effort to portray Kardashian as a principled person and loyal friend and not as vapid as his progeny appear to be.

The best performance so far as being the character he was portraying, in my opinion, was Sterling Brown as Christopher Darden.  My sense of Darden during the trial was that he was introverted and Marcia’s foil.

Kato Kaelin’s line, “Fame is complicated,” made me laugh. It was unbelievable to me that Kaelin could have formulated such a complicated thought. So was the sort of big personality he was imbued with. He always struck me as just quirky.

We’ll see how upcoming episodes play out. I do have to keep in mind that, like all dramatizations, fiction is sure to be mixed with fact. What bothers me about that is an unwitting public, unable to know one from the other, tends to believe that it’s all true.

 

 

 

 

Haiku Hiatus, But Simpson’s Still Here

No haiku for a few days. Apparently court was in recess, possibly for spring break.

Simpson Google News Alert emails continue to pop up my inbox, though. Most of them these days have to do with Simpson’s health, ongoing speculation about his paternity of one of the Kardashians (sorry not to be up on that clan), and the pending TV series based on a book CNN commentator and New Yorker writer Jeffrey Toobin wrote about the trial. Hearsay, hearsay, hearsay! (I still say they really missed out on what really went on behind the scenes by not basing the series on MY book.)

Sideshows Spawned by Simpson “Media Circus”

This story, How the O.J. Simpson trial paved the way for all things Kardashian, published a few days ago, raises an interesting point:

Would any of the Kardashians have made it big, or even have made it small, were it not for their patriarch, Robert, who was a confidante of O.J. Simpson and a member of his defense team?

I remember Kris at the trial in one of the more bizarre events during court proceedings — and there were a lot! Here’s how I recounted it in “Anatomy of a Trial”:

“Another day of a strange star alignment occurred less than a week before the trial ended. On September 27, [Judge Lance] Ito had given the two courtroom seats he held in reserve for his use, generally for visiting judge, his parents, or other relatives, to songwriter David Foster, whom he knew, and Foster’s wife. The wife had previously been married to former Olympian [Bruce] Jenner. And there in court that same day was Jenner with his current wife [Kris], who was the ex-wife of Simpson attorney Robert Kardashian. The Jenners sat with former baseball star [Steve] Garvey and his wife, who, months earlier, had been a prosecution witness.”

While it’s unknown if the Simpson trial was the Kardashians’ soda fountain counter stool [a la Lana Turner], the Zap2it writer, Sarah Huggins, of the above referenced article did correctly label the spectacle attendant to the trial, although probably not as she intended. That label was “media circus.”  While there certainly was a media circus surrounding the the trial, hard as they tried to make viewers and readers believe the trial itself was a circus, all the circus antics were outside the courtroom — including the demeaning little joke defense attorney Robert Shapiro pulled on Deputy District Attorney Chris Darden, which occurred in the back hallway behind the courtroom.

As the two lawyers were coming out of Ito’s chambers, Shapiro pointed to Darden’s necktie and appeared to ask him something about it. When Darden looked down at his tie, Shapiro brought his finger up and chucked Darden sharply under his chin. Shapiro smirked and said something I didn’t hear, but Darden looked humiliated.

When Kendall Jenner was Still in the Oven

This so wild!

Here’s a video of the Kardashian girls’ 17-year-old half sister, Kendall Jenner, flashing a new tattoo. http://www.aol.com/video/kendall-jenner-shows-off-body-art/517678765/?ncid=wsc-video-cards-headline

What’s wild isn’t the tattoo, although that’s bizarre enough. (It’s the profile of a skull wearing an Indian headdress.) The wild part for me is that the lovely young Kendall was the babe in Kris (Kardashian) Jenner’s tum the day she showed up at the infamous 1995 O.J. Simpson criminal trial in Los Angeles.

I noted Jenner’s appearance in the courtroom in my book (page 67) as “Another day of a strange star alignment.”

In court that day was songwriter David Foster and his wife who previously had been married to former Olympian Bruce Jenner. A row behind the Fosters and across the aisle sat Bruce and a very pregnant Kris Jenner. And sitting at the defense table with Simpson was Kris’s former husband, Robert Kardashian.

All of those connections were way closer than those six degrees of Kevin Bacon.